A senior White House adviser to Donald Trump, Kevin Hassett, is being mercilessly ridiculed as a living parody of a box-ticking economist after he promoted an end to national lockdown measures in an interview with CNN by declaring: “Our human capital stock is ready to go back to work.”
Officials in Missouri have meanwhile criticised the “irresponsible and dangerous” scenes of revellers ignoring social distancing rules to gather at a crowded lake over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a case emblematic of tensions across the US as the debate over reopening from the coronavirus shutdown continues.
The president himself has meanwhile mocked rival Joe Biden for wearing a face mask as he left his Delaware home for the first time in weeks on Monday to lay a wreath for fallen soldiers, despite Trump declining to wear one on a visit to Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He insisted yesterday he was “getting great reviews” for his response to the pandemic that has left nearly 100,000 Americans dead.
Please allow a moment for our live blog to load
